The present invention relates to a support method for administrating medically prescribed drugs without patient action, thereby averting patient mishandling in order to carry out home patient care, without danger of mistakes.
In particular for the aged, there are presently surveillance networks with central sites that call qualified personnel or a family member when an alarm is triggered by the aged person from home. Such an alarm is emitted when the aged person, wearing a case suspended from the neck or the wrist, and actuates the alarm via a button on its case.
By a well known manner, the case""s signal generator radios the central site which in turn transmits the signal to a base station.
Furthermore, such a network allows remote monitoring of various patient parameters such as temperature, heartbeat, etc.
In this regard, applicant discloses in its patent application FR/97 05547 a device for monitoring a person""s activities, and able to detect a fall so as to provide help. All these systems provide tangible help to the aged, the handicapped, or convalescents. However, they would fruitfully be complemented by a system assisting such people in taking drugs in the right doses and at the right time, as prescribed by their physicians. Indeed, the invention""s method and device intend to reduce the possibilities of mistakes when taking such drugs and also to avert mistakes in preparing the drug doses.
For that purpose the present invention relates to a method to help administrator prescription drugs without patient action and avoids patient errors so as to allow error-free home care. The method includes the following steps:
STEP I
prior preparation of one or more drug doses, prescribed by a physician, at a pharmacy;
programming and storing in a computer patient identification parameters (name, address, social security number) and the preparation corresponding to the prescribed drug(s) (drug name(s), dosage(s), ingestion time(s)).
STEP II
inserting the dosed drugs in a pack which is sealed thereafter,
transcribing the parameters onto a storage substrate integrated into the pack before transfer to the patient or medical personnel.
STEP III:
integrating the pack into a programmable dispenser which can be either manually, or automatically locked and initially is unlocked in order to feed the drug doses as a function of parameters stored in memory in the pack""s storage substrate and which are identified by the dispenser using an arbitrary read means when the parameters are called into play.
The invention furthermore relates to a device for implementing the method.
The present invention also concerns features which are elucidated in the following description and must be considered singly or in any conceivable technical combination.
This description is provided in an illustrative, but non-limiting manner, and elucidates the implementation of the invention in relation to the attached drawings.